Letters to Cas
by euphoricunderworld
Summary: [Sad continuation of It's the Calming before the Storm] [Major Character Death] Dean's dead and now Cas has to figure out how to mourn him. He wasn't supposed to go, though, so Cas finds himself completely unprepared.
1. Chapter 1

This is the sad continuation of It's the Calming Before the Storm.

* * *

Meredith was being particularly difficult, twisting and turning as Cas attempted to secure her in a diaper. The child was unruly just like her mother. He had finally stuck the little tabs down before she rolled and crawled toward the couch, where Cas knew she would pull herself up and start to walk – unsteadily like a college drunkard. He kept an eye on her as he pulled his vibrating phone out of his pocket, wondering why he would be getting a call so early on a Friday morning.

The name on the screen was Sam W and suddenly he had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. It seemed to be wrapped around his intestines, squeezing and jerking and making him feel as if he would vomit. "Hello?" His voice reflected none of his worry, and he hoped that it was unfounded. He had no idea why Sam would be calling him at all. Except… Dean had told him that Sam knew of their affair. Could he finally be truly upset about it enough to threaten to expose them if Cas did not? He had not thought that Sam would be so underhanded, though.

His own thoughts almost prevented him from actually hearing what the younger man was saying. He only caught the end. "… on impact." The words sounded emotionless, but Cas knew that Same was far from it. The colder he sounded, the hotter the emotions inside his chest.

"What?" He asked, hoping he had somehow misheard those two words because they could not mean anything good. There was nothing he could think of that would make Sam use the words 'on impact' that was anything Cas wanted to hear.

"Dean was drunk last night and drove home from the bar. He was driving too fast like an id-" There was silence and Cas could picture Sam clenching his jaw in the same way Dean always did – had. It was one of the few times the physical similarities between the brothers stood out. "He hit some ice and slid off the road. He hit a tree. They say he died on impact."

Cas felt his world stop and then start spinning in the opposite direction. There was no way Dean could be –

He could not have left Cas alone. Dean would not do that.

"The funeral is Monday at noon at New Life." He hung up before he could respond, which was just as well. He had no idea what to say.

He sat there, on the floor, for some length of time. The idea of time was a foreign concept to him. Finally, Meg pulle him out of his numbed shock and pushed him toward the bedroom. She as in her pajamas and there was no light in the windows. It had been before eight when Sam had called. How could he have sat there all day without thinking?

Meredith was already asleep and Cas could not bear the thought of sleeping himself. Meg watched him walk into the bathroom but made no attempt to follow him.

Cas stripped his clothes mechanically and stepped into the spray of the shower before it had completely warmed. The shock of cold water across his skin is probably what broke the numbness that had encased him since the call. Heat in his eyes gave way to tears down his cheeks.

Gradually they came more quickly and forcefully. He sank to the bottom of the stall and pulled his knees up to his chest. With his arms wrapped around his legs, he let out the sobs that were tearing his chest apart. They hurt and did nothing to lessen the hole that had opened inside of him. It was a black hole that just got bigger and bigger with everything it was fed.

At some point, Meg had joined him. Her red silk nightgown was getting wet and so was the bottom of her hair. She had an arm wrapped around Cas and he had no memory of leaning into her shoulder. The tears had finally stopped and he sat blinking and probing the depths of his loss.

"…you loved him." He was having a hard time catching everything anyone said today unless he was making an effort. Cas knew he had to tune in here because there was no telling what Meg had meant by that. "It was why I pushed you to go to that party. You weren't talking to Dean anymore and you were getting depressed about things. You were trying to act excited about Meredith but I could see. You're heart wasn't really here."

His gaze snapped to her face and searched it, hoping to find some clue to what her words had meant.

She gave a soft smile, but Cas could not tell if it was happy or sad. Perhaps she did not know. "I knew, Cas. I've known since the beginning. It took me a minute to figure out exactly who, but I did." She must have been able to read his face better than he could hers, because she reached over and turned off the shower. "Let's go discuss this somewhere more comfortable."

His mind was latching onto this conversation. He thought it might be because it was bound to be a very interesting one, but he also thought it might just be because thinking about this would be better than realizing that Dean was going to be bur-. He cut the thought off and focused on Meg changing and then throwing him pajama pants.

After he pulled them on, he sat on the edge of the bed, carefully far enough away from where Meg sat so that he was not touching her. Then, he set his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Thankfully, Meg did not make him wait too long. "You kept getting irritated every time your phone went off after your bachelor party. Then you said you had some errands to run and you'd be back soon the Saturday before we left. You took longer than I was expecting you to, but I didn't really think anything of it until that night." Cas knew they had not been intimate. He had not felt like doing so because he could still feel Dean's hands on his skin. "I came into the bathroom while you were getting into the shower. There were bruises on the back of your hip."

"No marks." Neither of them had noticed that Dean had not kept to that command.

"Nothing happened for a while, and so I put it aside. And then you started texting again. I snuck a look at your phone because I was curious and I looked through your texts. I was so angry at first because it seemed like you put so much more effort into talking to him than you did to me, and then I realized you guys talked through song lyrics. Which was weird, but I couldn't really think much else."

"Then you went back, and you kept going back. I was mad about it until I realized you always came back to me at the end of the weekend and you never put him first."

Cas could not help the wince that left his throat at her choice of words. Maybe he would not be here, mourning, if he had put Dean first.

He did not find sleep that night.


	2. Chapter 2

Cas could not force himself to eat the next morning. He barely remembered telling Meg and Meredith goodbye, just that Meg had said he could stay in Lawrence as long as he wanted because she could handle the baby while she was with her family in Paris.

He felt numb again. He sat in silence as he drove to Lawrence. Once he was there, he had no idea where he was supposed to go. Going to Dean's house sent a wave of blackness over his vision. He was not ready to face the emptiness there, yet.

Sam's house seemed to be the best idea. He and Jess had just bought it over the summer, preparing to create their life together.

It took him a few minutes to gather the energy to leave the car once he rolled into the driveway. His muscles were tense and his bones ached and he wondered if it was his body demanding that he feel his grief since his mind had frozen it.

Standing before the door in a daze, he only vaguely acknowledged that it had opened before pain flared in his jaw. Before he could come to terms with what had happened, rough hands shoved at his shoulders, sending him to slip into the snow piled before the steps.

Sam was breathing heavily and clenching his hands into fists. Cas watched him silently, wondering what was going on in his mind. Sam was rarely violent, as he was much more likely to try to solve his problems through talk. The fact that he had not even waited for Cas to speak before punching him was enough to tell even Cas, who had never been good at reading people or social clues, knew that it was best if he kept his mouth shut. Sam would talk when he was ready.

"I don't want to see you. I don't want to see your face until it's looking at Dean in his fucking coffin, Cas." The words made Cas's breath come shaky and he had to work not to cry. It was a mental image he had never wanted, and he did not appreciate the reality of the situation being pushed into his mind so blatantly. "He's my family, and he's gone now and it's your fault. You get to go back to your family, but I have to bury mine. So fuck you if you think you can come here and say anything I want to hear." He glared at Cas for a few more seconds, seemingly filled with disgust, while Cas lay on the ground, feeling snow melting into his clothing and shivering. He was not sure if it was with cold or in reaction to what Sam had said.

Finally, the younger – the only Winchester turned into the house and slammed the door behind him. Cas let his head drop down onto the snow, taking breaths and fighting his tears. After a time, he managed to pull himself up and back into his car.

The seat absorbed his weight and the wetness clinging to him and he knew that it would make him uncomfortable the next time he sat there, but he could not find it in himself to care at the moment. Right now, he was doing what he could to not start screaming.

Deep breaths calmed him enough to start driving again. He had no idea where he was going. He could not go to Balthazar or Gabriel because they dealt with grief by reminiscing. Even if he had felt up to discussing his memories of Dean, he could not share the ones that were bound to come up with the alcohol that either of them was sure to bring to the occasion. And anyway, he thought he would rather be alone.

So, he found himself in front of Dean's home.

Some sense of guilt had awakened in him outside of Sam's. It was gnawing at him and making his stomach an open pit of pain. Cas made himself work around it enough to get out of the car and pull his key from the key ring.

The house felt sad to him, like it knew that Dean was not there and never would be again. Perhaps he was just projecting, but he still shivered. The pit of pain grew at the familiar smell that graced his nose when he opened the door.

He cursed Dean and then himself in the same breath when he realized that the bed was freshly made with clean sheets. The words released the anger in him and he tore through the closet and under the sink before he finally found the bottle of whiskey in the laundry room. He had known that Dean would have hidden one.

The first shot fell down his throat with a burn. As he swallowed his second and third, he contemplated how quickly he had sunk into Dean's methods of dealing. Cas never really drank, had not since the party before graduation. He did not enjoy the feeling of being disconnected and separated, and especially the hangovers he always seemed to get.

This was different, though. Right now, he needed the disconnection. He needed something to push him away from the pain and desperation and loss that were sure to destroy him if he let it.

With his fourth shot came the bitterness. He cried, curled up in the kitchen, abandoning his shot glass in favor of drinking from the bottle. Dean was gone. Dean would never touch him or kiss him again. Dean would be buried in the ground, his life unlived.

Dean would never hear the things that he needed to. Like that Cas loved him and wanted him and craved his touch every time he crawled into bed and Meg would hold him. He would never know that Cas was broken beyond repair now that he was gone.

He took the bottle with him as he made his way through the house. In the bathroom, he drank down four swallows of the bitter liquid and put Dean's aftershave on his wrists. Afterwards, he fell asleep curled up around the bottle of whiskey and Dean's dirty shirt in the laundry room.


	3. Chapter 3

His back was tense and his hand was asleep, but he still held himself still. His head was pounding and it tasted like there was toxic sludge in his mouth, but he still would not open his eyes. He wanted to slip back into sleep but his bladder was full and demanding release. He still wanted to just…

If he stayed still and kept his eyes closed, maybe his memories of the last few days would be wrong. Maybe Dean would come into the laundry room and call him an idiot for sleeping on the floor, laughing and leaning on the door, humor on his face. Maybe he would pull him up and kiss him or crawl down beside him and hold him. He would make breakfast and make a joke about Cas being the one with the hangover this time, and turnabout was fair play.

It was an hour after he woke up when he had to admit that it was not going to happen. Dean was really not going to come and comfort him through this. He pushed himself up and made his way to the bedroom, doing his best to ignore the yawning chasm in his heart. He grabbed some clothes that he always left here out of the closet and took them to the bathroom. He tried not to remember that they would not be clean the next time he came over, because Dean would not be picking them up and throwing them in the washer without even a thought, because he did not leave his clothes around to get 'musty'.

The shower did nothing to calm him and breakfast was toast he only ate half of. He wanted the eggs that Dean would always make on Saturday mornings and the orange juice he always had. It was in the fridge, but Cas could not bear the thought of being the one to get his glass.

After an hour spent lying on the couch and trying not to think, he decided he had better do something. He could save Sam the trouble and start packing up Dean's things. With everything else that he had done, the least he could do would be to save some trouble for Dean's brother.

The gaping hole in his chest opened further at the thought, but he made his way to his car to buy boxes.

Three hours later and most of the kitchen and the dining room had been dealt with. He was tucking the movies into another box when he found the Star Wars movies he had gotten Dean almost three years ago. He thought about watching them, but instead tucked them into a separate box. There were some things he wanted to take with him.

Maybe doing things without Sam to breathe over his shoulder would allow him to keep some of his dignity. He knew he wouldn't appreciate a witness to the dry sobbing he managed as he thought of all the things they talked about as they watched movies late into the night.

The bedroom would be hardest for him, he knew. So he walked into the second bedroom. Dean had made it into his office area, with a bookshelf and his computer inside of it. He put the Vonnegut books into his own box and then packed away the rest of them. The computer would have to be left up to Sam because Cas was sure he would just break something.

Now that he was in the room, he realized how rarely he had ever been in it. He had no idea what Dean kept in here at all, aside from the obvious. He had to check the closet, though he could not imagine that Dean would use this one more than the one in his room. Dean liked clothes and such, but never so much to dedicate more than most of a closet to them.

When he rolled the doors to the sides, an odd sight greeted him. Shoe boxes were stacked on each other until they were about waist high. What could Dean have needed so many shoe boxes for? Where would he have gotten so many?

He grabbed one and opened it, finding it full of pictures of Dean's mother and father, and him and Sam as kids. That would obviously be for Sam to have, so he set it to the side. He had no memories of Dean before freshman year, as that was when he had transferred to the same school. Keeping any of the pictures would just be robbing Sam of them.

The next one held nothing but Dean's wrist cast and a ripped shirt. The heart was still there, faded and coated in grime because Dean had of course still worked with a broken wrist. Cas swallowed at the thought that he had kept it, but he was confused. The shirt was from a different weekend. Had Dean so treasured the memory that he had to keep it?

Dean had gotten drunk after taking the day off. Cas did not think that Dean had remembered it was a day he would be there. It was the anniversary of the car accident that had taken his mother from him eighteen years before. When Cas walked in, they had started to fight because Cas hated to see him drunk and had not realized the significance of the date. Dean had grabbed him by his shirt and pulled at it, screaming about something that had nothing to do with his mother. It had ripped in his hands and Dean had stared at it in horror. Then he had cried and Cas had held him, tears trailing onto his bare skin through the tear. That was when Cas had realized that the date was important. He had gone to buy Dean more whiskey after he had cried himself out. It was one of the few times that he had actually helped Dean to drink.

Would things have been different if he had not?

Dean had kept the shirt, though. Why would he do that? Did he only want to remember the time that Cas had helped him drink? Or the time that Cas had been there for him, as he had not been so many times before?

He set that box to another side, because Sam would not want it and would not understand the significance. Cas felt a curious depression overtake him when he realized that if Meg were to look in them, she would not understand either. She would understand that it was from Dean's, but she would not see why looking at it had made his throat tighten and that it had taken a tremendous amount of effort to keep the keening he wanted to emit inside his throat.

Then, he grabbed another.

An old receipt from the Roadhouse was in another box. When he flipped it over, he realized Dean had written on the back, the blue pen splotchy and somewhat shaky.

_You're in Cancun with your wife. Happy fucking Birthday to me._

Cas remembered it. It had been at the beginning of them, before they had understood that they loved each other. He remembered sitting on the beach, watching Meg float in the pool before him and thinking about Dean. Thinking that it was Dean's birthday. He wanted to call or text or something, but he had left his phone at home at Meg's insistence. She had demanded that it be just the two of them and had locked both of their phones in the safe in their living room.

He had bought the Star Wars DVD's at the airport on the way home.

In light of their recent conversation, he wondered if it had been intentional. Had she realized Dean's birthday was going to make him want to talk to him? Had she wanted to command all of his attention so he would not forget who he was supposed to be thinking about? He knew that this would not be the last time he used that conversation to figure out their interactions. What had Meg been thinking when he had not realized she knew?

Cas had to sit and think before he could continue looking in the boxes. Dean had written to him without actually letting him get any of the letters. What was he supposed to think about that? Was he just supposed to never know they existed? There was a bitterness to the triumph he felt that he felt at having found them. He had found them without Dean's knowledge, but he could never tell Dean that he knew.

A part of him wanted to read every single one of them, and another wanted to burn all the boxes without ever looking. Seeing Dean's handwriting on receipts and paper and probably a million other things would just bring home to him that he was only seeing them because Dean was gone and had no say in the matter.


	4. Chapter 4

Sunday morning came with fresh snow and a headache that pulsed in time with his heart. He knew that it was his heartbeat, and yet Cas could not help but feel that iw as some other beat. How could his heart beat so steadily when Dean was gone?

It should be stuttering, wildly throwing itself around his chest cavity, or stopping all together. This unfaltering constant beat was wrong and grating on his nerves.

His tongue was coated with stale vomit and it felt like sand was grinding behind his eyelids. He remembered crying in Dean's office, his hands white-knuckled around the cast and the ripped shirt. Then he had taken solace in another bottle of whiskey.

Now he lay on the couch, wearing the same clothes from yesterday and feeling disgustingly grimy and contemplating.

Cas had known that he was not happy, he just had not realized that he was unhappy. He loved his daughter and knew that he would give his life to keep her happy. And yet, a part of him resented her. If she were not around, he would be with Dean.

Or, he would have been.

Would Dean be alive if he had left Meg?

Of course, there was no way to know. But Cas felt certainty in his bones. Dean would still be here.

For the first time, Cas allowed himself to dwell on all the ways that Dean's death was his fault and guilt the likes of which he had not felt since his freshman year made itself at home in his stomach.

If he had just been able to let go of the way that Dean had texted him, Dean could have moved on. He would have found someone else to love him and take his mind from it. Then Cas would be with Meg and Dean would be with someone else. They would not have ever talked again, he was sure, but Dean would be alive.

If he had not given in to his desire to text him after that first time, Dean would have decided it was over. He could have moved on then.

If he had ended it at any point, Dean would have been hurt, but surely he could have healed?

If he had taken five minutes and realized that Dean had needed him, he could have made an effort to come down.

The thought made tears slip out of his eyes. He should have realized that Dean needed him and that his absence made him drink more. He had not seen him in months. Why could he not make the time to just come down for the night?

And that was when the guilt got unbearable. That was when he found yet another fifth, because Dean was reliable even in death. It was only noon, but he was swallowing searing mouthfuls like a champion. He had not seen Dean in months and could not make the time to see him for one night before he left for three weeks? What kind of horrible person was he? Was there a special circle of hell for lover's who could not keep their promises? Because he was sure that that was where he would go.

He sat in the kitchen for some indeterminable length of time before stumbling his way to the office. He had enough liquid courage in his stomach that he could maybe read a few more of the notes. He knew that there must be so many that he had never read and had not been meant to see. He knew that they were all going to make him feel worse, but he knew he would hate himself if he could not read them.

On a ripped up scrap of paper, Dean's writing stung his eyes.

_I spend hours looking for the perfect lyrics to send you. I don't trust the words from my own brain._

Why? Was Dean just as unable to articulate himself as Cas was? Because he knew the reason he spent so much time listening intently to every song on the radio. He wanted words that were not his to express himself. If someone else said the words, he could blame anything wrong with them on someone else. It did not have to be his fault if they were not perfect, if they were too close.

In one box, there was nothing but an empty cigarette pack. Sloppy black sharpie letters proclaiming pain before he even read the words.

_You told me you loved me before you left yesterday. I drank a fifth of whiskey and smoked a pack of cigarettes – this pack. I called in sick to work today._  
_I can't believe you'd say it to me and then not let me tell you that I love you, too._

The stark black words sent a paroxysm of grief through him. He remembered it perfectly. He had wanted to let Dean know that he cared and that he loved him, some small way of admitting the decision he had come to. Of course he could not tell Dean that he had decided to leave Meg, but he could let him know that he was serious, right?

He could not have left her feeling good about it, but he had realized that there was no other way. It was not fair to Meg or Dean to continue on in the way things had been. It was not even fair to him, though that consideration had been small in his mind. He knew that he was not important.

Cas had wondered how it would feel to let him know. It had felt wonderful, and it was yet another reason why he had decided to leave Meg. Just feeling the lightness in his heart was enough to convince him that he had made the right decision. Meg had not made him feel so light in years.

He had wondered if Dean was angry about the confession. Apparently he had been, but not for the reasons that he had thought. He wished he could have stayed the night again, to listen to Dean, to hear him say those words for the first time. To bury himself in experiences with the man.

It was even more important to him now that he knew what came after that weekend. It acquired a more poignant stress when he thought about the fact that now Dean was gone and he would never hear his voice say that he loved him again.


	5. Chapter 5

Warning: There are mentions of suicide and minor character death in this chapter. And it's only going to get worse from here.

* * *

He cried and forced himself to open another box. Dean had apparently had no organization in place, because he knew that he was not reading in order. He would think that the top ones would have the most recent things, but that was not the case. The pack of cigarettes had happened before his cast would have come off, but it had been in a box that was closer to the door than the cast was.

It really did not matter, though. Cas knew he was just distracting himself from whatever pain this box would bring to him.

_I took pictures of you when you were sleeping. It was hot and you were naked on the bed with all the sheets on the floor. I wanted a physical reminder of your body so when you stopped coming around I'd still remember. I deleted them all yesterday because I felt like a perv._

A bitter smile played at his lips because he remembered how often he had wanted to take pictures of Dean. He could not, though. Meg looked through his phone and he knew there was no easy way to explain away any pictures he took. So, instead, he concentrated on remembering every detail.

_I manage to convince myself that you're never leaving every time you come back. It breaks me when you do._

That was where he had to stop. He had to stop reading or he was going to dissolve. Dean's pain was reaching up from his spindly letters and wrapping itself around his throat. It was gripping tighter and tighter, stopping the air from coming in and his grief from coming out. It was stagnating in his stomach, sour and ruthless in its churning.

He swallowed a bit more whiskey and then lay back. The carpet was rough under his skin, but he did not mind. Cas needed a physical sensation that would pull him from this. His mind was running around like a frightened animal, steadily focusing on the last time he had felt so brittle.

Jimmy had been his best friend growing up. He was really more of a brother to Cas. Jimmy had been the first to put the clues together and decide that Cas must be bisexual. He was the only one that he had ever really talked to about it and the only one to support him through that rough realization.

He had always been there when Cas fought with his family because they were not his parents but insisted on ruling him. He was there through all the squabbles between Bathazar and Gabriel and him.

He had started to feel weak in March. He could not always catch his breath and he kept getting bruises.

By July, Cas was standing at a grave feeling lost. The person he needed to talk to so that he could get over it was lying in a casket, wasted away and bald and looking completely different from himself. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia had stolen him away from Cas and Cas had no one to go to any more.

It had been silly for him to only have one person to help him through things, but he had never expected his fourteen year old best friend to die.

Cas had always been a little melancholy. He tended not to fight against the bad emotions he felt, instead choosing to wallow in them. With Jimmy no longer there to snap him out of it, he spiraled downward.

One day in September he woke up unexpectedly in a hospital bed. He was told that Balthazar had found him passed out in the bathroom before the pills he had taken could kill him properly. Cas had never thanked him for it, but he had never been able to decide if he was actually thankful. He had chosen to die and then the choice was taken from him.

Now he realized he did not think it was a good thing. If he had not survived, Dean would never have gotten to know him or fall in love with him or be an idiot and drive himself off an icy road in the middle of December. He would still be alive and Cas would never have caused so much misery.

The guilt was seeping into his pores. It was infusing every part of him and lending an onerous quality to every movement.

He sipped at the whiskey again and then pulled another box. He might as well see how much damage he had caused.

_I started taking pictures of all the marks you leave on me._

How many had he left? Was there a massive pile of pictures showing the hickeys he had left on his collarbones? The scratches on his back? The bite marks on hips and shoulders and arms and legs? Were they secreted away on his computer or his phone?

He was tempted to look, but he knew his drunkenness had not added to his ability to work a computer. Instead, he set the note with all the others in the box that had held the cast. He planned to keep them. Then, he pulled out another note from another random box.

_She's pregnant._

The words are shaky on the page and blurred because it had been wet at some point. It smelled like whiskey but Cas had no idea if that was the paper or the bottle he had just sipped from or his own breath. It could be all of them.

For some insane reason, he had decided he could somehow find a good way to tell Dean. And then it had started to scare him so he thought that maybe if he never told Dean, he would not know how much it had messed him up. How much it had hurt to know that he had just decided he was so in love with Dean that he was leaving his wife and then found out he was having a child with her. How it had hurt him so badly because he was going to be a father and he would not be like his own. He would not leave Meg to raise that child on her own.

He had still had no idea how to bring it up to Dean when he had found the sonogram. Dean had been so angry and hurt. Cas had watched it roll off of him and he knew why because he understood how it must have looked from his perspective. He was carrying around evidence that he was having a child but had never told him. He had wanted to kiss him and tell him he would find a way to make everything okay because he could not bear that look of betrayal on Dean's face.

But Dean had said to go and he had. He did not try to do more than say that he had not known what to say before he had grabbed his things and stayed at Gabriel's house. He had resisted every impulse to text him or call him and apologize. He had done his best to bury himself in his marriage, but could never get Dean out of his mind.

He would remember the way he laughed or the look he got when he concentrated or the way he walked from the bedroom to the coffee pot first thing in the morning, starting his coffee before he even went to the bathroom.

Even the memory of his conversation with Meg did nothing to destroy his memory of going to Balthazar's party. He had been so angry when Dean had grabbed the bottle that he had not stopped to think before following him into the bathroom.

Things had been different between them, but Cas had thought things would get better with time. They obviously had not, as he now had a funeral to attend tomorrow.

That thought had him finishing the bottle before sprawling on the bathroom floor, falling asleep to the world spinning around him.


	6. Chapter 6

Cas woke up with a sore back and yet another hangover. It was becoming a familiar sensation, but he put it out of his mind. He put everything out of his mind because he would not function if he thought. He felt like a machine as he showered and then stood naked in Dean's bedroom, looking in the closet.

His mind had been preoccupied before he left and so he had somehow forgotten to pack a suit. How could he forget to pack a suit to wear to his lover's funeral? How could a detail like that be pushed so completely out of his brain?

The bed was still made, since he could not convince himself to sleep in it. It would have felt wrong without Dean pressed against his back. Instead, he had found his rest in the laundry room and in the bathroom.

Distraction techniques were not working. He still knew that he was pulling on Dean's suit to wear to his funeral and that in less than an hour he would be standing by a grave.

The drive to the New Life Cemetery passed in a blur. Was it because he was still operating over a hangover? Or was his brain simply shutting down in preparation for the onslaught of grief? It did not matter; he could see the family gathered already, all carefully keeping their eyes away from the casket that stood to the side of them.

Cas could not help staring at it. Would he see Dean's broken body inside? Would the morticians have managed to keep his beauty or would it be obscured and tainted with make-up?

He said nothing to the family, but the only one who would blame him was clenching his jaw and had leveled a look of hatred at him already. Cas just took it in and fed it to his guilt. He knew that this was his fault.

Dean was not to be seen. While he had spent five minutes just staring at the closed casket, Ellen had walked up beside him. Usually he would have noticed something like that, but there was nothing usual about this day.

"They said he was too broken for an open casket." Her eyes were red rimmed, like almost everyone else, but her voice did not crack or even sound strained. Dean had always said she was made of steel because she cared but she never let it destroy her.

Words were stuck in his throat. He wanted to apologize to her for causing this, but he knew that he did not deserve the chance at forgiveness. He wanted to tell her how much he had loved him and how he would miss him, but he knew that he could not. Instead, he nodded.

He stood on the opposite side of the casket than Sam. Sam clenched his jaw and silent tears ran down his cheek. His hands were clasped in front of him and Cas could see that they were tense and tight around each other. Jess cried and wiped her nose beside him, using one hand to rub circles on his back. Bobby had his arm around Ellen and tears came from both of them. Jo kept her head down, but he could see Ash passing her tissues even as he wiped his own eyes.

Cas stood, numb and doing his best not to listen to the Christmas songs coming from passing cars. It was too surreal. Songs about reindeers would fill the silence between then preacher's words and everyone would flinch. Christmas was less than a week away and here they were, mourning. At least the grief made it so no one shivered in the cold. They were too worn down to have the energy.

He left before Sam could corner him. He had seen the intention in the tensing of the taller man's shoulders and in the burning holes he could feel forming in his chest. When he got to his car, Sam was there, though. He was leaning against the silver side of it with his hands in his pockets. He said nothing, just pulled his hand out and placed something on the roof of the car then walked away.

Dean's phone sat on the car when he got there. It would have felt like he was stabbed if he had let himself feel anything.

He stopped at the store on his way back to Dean's. He had more letters to read and he needed more whiskey.

Before this weekend, Cas had rarely drank. If he did, though, he preferred vodka. It was just fitting to drink what Dean drank, though, so he did not even think about touching the clear bottles.

He forced himself to stop at a fast food chain and managed to eat half of the burger before he threw it away. Then, he set himself up to be tortured, back in jeans and a tee shirt and sitting in front of the closet.

I stopped you from leaving by slamming you against a wall and kissing you. I wonder if you heard me through the door when you finally pulled yourself out. I said I love you and I miss you when you're gone. I wonder how long I can do this. Is this going to be the rest of my life? Me always convincing myself that I can survive just fine without you when you go back to your wife? God, I hope not. It's too pathetic. I don't want to give you up, though.

It had been the rest of his life. Cas swallowed and then spoke. It did not matter that Dean could not hear, it was important that he say it. "I love you. I am so sorry."

How different would things have been if I hadn't stopped things in high school? Would you be with me? I doubt it. I always manage to fuck things up somehow.

He had to laugh. Dean had thought he would fuck things up when it had been Cas doing it all along. But at the same time…

"No, Dean. You never could have. I would have been with you from that moment on. I would have snuck you into my dorm room in college. I would have made you go to college. I would have made sure that you never ever left me or thought that you were not enough." His voice was harsh and he realized that, aside from placing his order earlier in the day, he had not spoken in days.

Dean's phone was in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked back through the texts that were still on it. They brought an ice cold emptiness to his intestines, and he warmed himself with more whiskey.

When he opened the gallery, he was stunned to find that all but a handful of the pictures were various pictures of naked Dean. They were never vulgar or even complete. There was a picture taken in the mirror of the bathroom of his back. He would recognize that constellation of freckles across shoulder blades even if the side of Dean's face was not also visible. There were two angry red lines running from shoulder to hip and Cas knew what he had found.

There was a bite mark, red still, around the small mole Dean had on his hip. It was one of his favorite places to kiss and bite.

Hundreds of pictures, all parts of Dean with some physical sign Cas had left of his presence. It made him wonder what he had been thinking when he took them. Was he trying to remember them all? Was he documenting all the times that Cas had not been held by the 'no marks' rule? Because he knew that he had no marks when he left Dean. He checked.

Seeing Dean's naked flesh caused a searing pain in him. He calmed himself with liberal applications of liquor and tears.


	7. Chapter 7

A persistent ringing woke him, slumped against the wall in the office. It took him a moment to place the sound, but when he did, he crazily dug through his pockets. He did not know exactly who called him, but he had a suspicion.

Cas answered just before the call would have been sent to voicemail. It was a number that he had not recognized, but it was international so it greatly reduced the possible candidates on the other end. "H'lo?"

"Hey, baby. We just made it to the hotel. Thought I'd call to see how you were holding up?" Her voice sounded tinny and distant, though he thought it was not all to do with the physical miles between them. He felt as if there were a chasm between them in his mind.

"I have been better. The words slipped out empty and numb. He did not want to talk to anyone when his brain was pounding a cadence of grief between his temples and a hole existed in his stomach that shook with nausea and a strangely remote hunger.

"But you're okay? Considering, at least?" Meg sounded anxious, and he knew he needed to make her feel better. It did not matter that he did not think he was doing well at all, he could not justify worrying her when she was busy celebrating Christmas with her family.

He wondered when he had decided that he was not really her family.

"I will be fine, Meg. Don't worry about me." The lie tasted bitter, but he had no idea what else he was supposed to say.

She took it, though. "Well, my mom is busy with Meredith, so I'm gonna try to nap. I'll call you in a few days. Keep your chin up. Love you."

Somehow, he forced his mouth to open and emit the words she needed to hear. "I love you." After, he wondered why it had been so hard to say. Cas still loved Meg, he knew that. Underneath his loss there was still love. Perhaps, though, it had not been so hard to say but hard to hear. He knew he deserved no love when Dean was in a grave and it was his fault.

The phone call did convince him to do something besides wallow with his day. The drive took him through a shower and halfway through his breakfast. Even though his stomach growled, protesting its continued emptiness, he could do no more than force himself to swallow a few bites of toast.

The old him, the one that had died on the phone with Sam's pronouncement and been buried with Dean, would have called him pathetic. The only thing he could seem to swallow anymore was guilt and whiskey, and this new, withered Cas could only say that Dean had been on to something.

He convinced himself that he needed more time before he read the letters, that the guilt was getting too deep and he was in danger of drowning. Cas sent a text to Sam, telling him that he was going through Dean's home and he would take nothing he did not know Dean would have wanted him to have. He maintained a steady half-drunk state, slowly feeling himself slide too far.

Then, he sat on the couch for a few hours, watching television until the urge to see Dean's handwriting screaming his pain sat in his skin like a rash. The only way to take away the itch was to read the letters he knew still waited for him.

Of course, New Cas went nowhere without his whiskey bottle, so he set it to his side and dug for a random box.

You told me you loved me as you went to sleep. I couldn't say it back because I was afraid it was just reflex from falling asleep with her. I wanted to, though. I wanted to wake you up and kiss you and make love to you, like I do my best to tell myself we don't already do. It's easier if it's just fucking, because then I can pretend you mean nothing to me. You do, though. You mean so much that I can barely stand it. I guess that's why I drink so much. When I'm drunk, I can pretend that … I don't know. I just stop caring so much when I'm drunk.

The words were running together, tearing his chest to shreds and leaving needles in his veins.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

The words were destroying the tenuous hold he had on his sanity. He needed to stop, but it was his last hold on Dean. He had to keep going.

I want to ask you to leave me because it hurts that I can't have you. But I did that and I couldn't handle it. I want to ask you to leave her but I don't deserve to have you to myself.

"I hope I would have left. If you had asked, I hope I would have held onto you."

I told my mom about you. I think she'd like you. She'd probably like you a whole lot better if you weren't married, but I'm sure she'd be happy that I was happy. And I am, for the most part. At least when you're around.

Cas remembered Dean visiting his mother's grave. The weekend after had been when he was supposed to come down to visit, but Dean had asked him not to. He could not help his mind thinking that maybe Dean had been wondering if he should continue the affair. Had that been when Dean had written about asking Cas to leave?

There was only so much wondering he could do with so little whiskey left in his bottle. He had to put that note aside and find a new box. This delving into Dean's thoughts was a kind of therapy for him. He knew there was no way that a therapist would ever prescribe it, though, and in fact, if one were to read his mind, would surely sentence him to days in a psychiatric ward.

He shook his head and opened another box. There was just an envelope in it, but when he looked at the writing, he had a sinking feeling in his stomach. He would recognize Meg's writing anywhere.

His wedding picture was inside, and it was marked for just a few days before Cas had first texted Dean. No wonder it had taken Dean so long to text him back. He must have thought that Cas had sent that picture, but Cas was not that cruel. At least, not on purpose. He could not help but to remember the sonogram incident. He knew that had been cruel, though he had not meant it to go that way.

He knew what it meant that Meg had sent it, in view of her knowledge. Now, he felt an anger in him, displacing his sadness. He pulled it around him so that it warmed his body, but only took it with him long enough to get another bottle of whiskey from the kitchen. Once he had swallowed some, it deserted him. It only gave him fire to press out his tears as he lay on the couch.


	8. Chapter 8

Wednesday morning brought him a voicemail from his work, asking when he would be returning. He deleted it and then turned his phone off, not returning the call. He wanted no contact with anyone. Thankfully, Sam seemed to be putting off going through Dean's home, so he need not explain his presence to him.

Cas barely gave himself time to shower before he put himself in front of the closet again. His knees were starting to creak from sitting in the same position for so long, but he did not care. His discomfort meant nothing anymore. He was almost sure that he was reading the letters as a form of penance, though he knew there was nothing he could do that would take his guilt away.

I told you I don't love you anymore. I hope I get a chance to tell you that I do.

He remembered getting that text message. He had been half asleep, Meg tossing and turning and growling about the baby not letting her sleep. Cas had only half-heartedly tried to soothe her, because his mind was taken with the realization that he had thrown away his best shot at being happy.

Even though, logically, he knew that he could not have left Meg, he knew that his own dissatisfaction was his fault. He had not come clean to Dean and instead left him when he was obviously not in a good place. It was all because he could not figure out how to calm him, how to make it right.

His curiosity had gotten the best of him, and he had found the song that the lyrics belonged to. He had listened to it, feeling his depression grow stronger. Even finding out that they were having a daughter had done nothing to alleviate it.

Now, that whole fight meant that he had lost a month and a half of time with Dean.

Love you. Hate you. Miss you. Want you.

"Me, too."

You said that it was alarming how many whiskey bottles were always in the trash. I thought about just taking out the trash before you came around, but you're smart. You'd have figured it out. So I guess I'll stop drinking so much at home.

The guilt was a sea that swallowed him. That had only been a few weeks ago. He had been worried for Dean, and had hoped that his voicing it would make Dean drink less.

Sam had said that for the last few weeks, Dean had not been coming home from work until late in the evening, most often drunk and belligerent. He kept going to the bar directly after work.

Because he had not wanted Cas to see how much he drank.

His being at the bar that night was his fault. He had known that he was the reason that Dean was gone, but he had thought it was less pointed.

If he had kept his mouth shut, Dean would have continued to drink at home. It would have destroyed him eventually, but maybe between his family and Cas they could have saved him. Instead, Cas had basically told him to drink away from home.

So Dean got drunk at a bar. And then tried to drive home on icy roads and died.

His bones had turned to guilt. It was drowning him, forcing all the air out of his lungs. He was laying on the carpet and doing his best to remember how to breathe. He gave it up, though, and decided to funnel his guilt into anger.

It built up into rage.

He screamed, letting loose a ragged sound that hurt his throat and did nothing to lessen the pain in his body. His hands were shaking and his muscles were clenched.

He reached out and gripped the whiskey bottle, his perpetual companion, slamming it against the carpet beside him. It let out a hollow sound and then shattered, cutting his hand in the process.

The physical pain only served as a catalyst, catapulting him into action. Small shards bit into his feet as he leaned into the closet, throwing the boxes across the room. Dean's cast flew out of its box and hit the window, cracking it.

He left the room, anger making his steps louder and quicker than usual. It was a change he could almost appreciate, as his actions over the last few days had been so muted. But the cause of it just sent him further into grief and then anger, because grief was not where he wanted to be.

The living room called to him, and he entered. He picked up the DVD player and threw it into the wall, watching plaster crack under the pressure. He felt like that.

He snapped DVD's, not caring that they cut into his fingers even more, leaving red smears on everything he touched. He pushed the television off the entertainment center and kicked it with his bare feet until they were bleeding and there were cracks through everything.

Into the kitchen he went, shattering plates and empty whiskey bottles. He opened one and drank half of it, taking it with him as he moved down the hall.

In the bathroom, he threw Dean's aftershaves at the mirror, wanting to break it before he had to look at himself. He went back to the kitchen for a knife and cut up the towels and the shower curtain. His own blood on the handle made it slippery and he cut his own knees through his jeans.

He could not care. Dean was gone and it was his fault and he deserved the pain.

The anger was receding by the time he made it to the bedroom. He ripped clothes off of hangers and pulled drawers out of the dresser, but it was halfhearted.

Already, tears were tracking their way down his face. His angry grunts were giving way to shaking sobs. He dropped to his knees by the bed, running his hands over his face, not caring about the salt from his tears in the cuts or the fact that he was getting blood all over his face.

He had no idea how long he stayed there, but finally, his back and knees screaming in agony, he hauled himself into the bed. Cas fell asleep bleeding and crying into Dean's pillow. He pretended he could still smell him.


	9. Chapter 9

I did my best to make sure this was as non-triggering as I could, but I know that it could be bad. This is really really sad and very very final. If you don't think you can handle it, don't read it. TW: Suicide - not explicit

* * *

He woke, groggy and little slices of agony making themselves at home in his hands and feet and knees. He could feel his skin pulled tight over freshly formed scabs and almost relished in the pain that breaking them with his movement caused.

Cas could not help the way his heart was stuttering in his chest as he walked through the house, cataloging the damage he had done the night before. Everything was a mess. There were bloody smears on the walls and sometimes holes. He had no recollection of punching the walls, but everything was a blur after the kitchen. The bathroom mirror, though cracked and missing pieces, showed him that it was not only the house that experienced devastation. Blood was caked into his hair and on his face, trailing down his neck and onto his shirt.

A hollowness had permeated him, though. He ran the water, cold and stinging in his cuts, ready to wash his face. It did not make a lot of sense to wash his face of blood, but he did it, standing in slivers of broken mirror and soap burning its way into his skin. It did not matter anymore.

The eyes that looked at him from the mirror knew what was happening, and it did not matter how much he looked. There was no part of him that was not ready for what he had decided to do. There was no part left inside of him that was worth saving, or even wanted it.

Instead of worrying about anything, he pulled socks onto his feet. Then, he pulled off his blood stiff clothes and got dressed in some of Dean's clothes. The jeans were baggy and fell low on his hips, but it was covered with an AC/DC shirt and a black hoody. His appearance was really the last thing on his mind.

Some odd looks were thrown his way at the grocery store, but he had no brain capacity to really care. All that mattered was that he had remembered to grab his wallet so he could buy what he had come for.

Once home again, because Dean's house had always been his home and how was it possible that he had not noticed before now? He put his bag on the table, knowing the contents had to wait. He looked at the evidence of his rampage and felt nothing, because everything was swallowed by the abyss inside of him. It sucked all of his feelings and thoughts in and left him comfortable in his unfeeling.

It did not matter what Meg would do. It did not matter how it would affect Meredith. It did not matter what Balthazar or Gabriel or Sam would think or feel. He had made up his mind and he would not back down. This would be the one thing he would accomplish without screwing up.

This time, there was no one to idiotically save him. There was no one to tell him things would get better. It would not, and he knew that. He would always feel this pain in his skin and bones and nerves and muscles. Every part of him would always be permeated with this anguish. It would slowly decay his body until he was nothing but a putrid mess wherever he was left.

Better to stop things before they got so far.

With these things in mind, he pulled a pad of paper and a pen out of Dean's bedroom and sat at the dining room table, balancing on the three legs of the only chair he had not completely demolished.

It was hard to focus his thoughts. Every time he tried to bear down on them enough to write something, anything down, they took flight like a flock of birds scared into the sky.

Time was passing, more than he intended, and still there was nothing written down. The pen had tooth marks on it that he did not remember giving to it but he knew had not been there before he grabbed it. The paper was still perfectly white with undisturbed blue lines. His mind still refused to give him the succinct words he knew resided in it.

Finally, dark had fallen and he decided he need not wait for words any longer. He simply wrote the two that were playing through the back of his head since Sam had called him.

My fault.

He left the pad of paper there, with the pen. Cas had no plans to use it again.

The bag he had brought from the store followed him into the bedroom. For a moment, he wondered if he should change the sheets, as they were coated in his dried blood, but then he realized how silly that was. Why should he get rid of dirty sheets when he merely planned to die in them?

Before he carried through with his plan, he settled himself on the bed and spread the contents of the bag around him, then wondered if he was damned to hell for this. Did it matter? He was already damned to hell for his adultery, homosexual relations, and impure thoughts. Suicide seemed to be just the finishing touch on his existence.


	10. Chapter 10

Jess had taken to letting him sleep in until the alarm went off. Though they'd never talked about it, he knew it was because she could tell that waking up hurt. When he was asleep, everything felt normal. When he woke up, he remembered that he was now the last Winchester. As such, he didn't appreciate being awakened at eight in the morning; especially when his alarm was due to go off in more than an hour. As soon as he answered the call, he knew it wasn't going to be a good day. "Hello?" "Sam Winchester?" It was a woman that seemed vaguely familiar, but not enough for him to place. After he had made some sort of affirmative sound, she continued. "I now you probably don't want to talk to me, but…" The voice trailed off for a second. "Oh, my god. It's only eight there! It's two in Paris, I completely forgot about the time difference." With that information, he was able to figure out who must be calling him. Why, of course, was another story. "Yeah, it's early. Why are you calling?" He didn't really have the patience to be polite right now. "Cas hasn't answered my phone calls. It's been going to straight to voicemail since Wednesday. I just have a really bad feeling. Have you seen him?" Now that he thought about it, she sounded a bit different than he would have expected, though he hadn't really ever thought about meeting her. He only vaguely remembered their wedding. "Not since the funeral. If I see him, though, I'll let him know you called." Sam shook his head and then thought. "Have you called Gabe or Balthazar?" Meg snorted. He hadn't thought Cas would marry a woman that snorted. "No. I thought that my husband's lovers brother would know where he was better than his family. Of course I called them." Sam hadn't known that she knew, but he didn't really feel like working through those complications right this second. "I'll let him know, bye!" He didn't want for her to acknowledge the dismissal, just hung up and grumbled into his hands. As he showered, he began to understand what Meg had meant about having a bad feeling. If Cas had gone back home, Balthazar would know, or Gabe. So, he wasn't answering his phone and he was still in Lawrence. What would be the reason behind that? Where would Cas stay if it weren't at one of his cousins? Dean's house, of course. Sam was angry that Cas couldn't just take care of himself, and instead made it so that Sam had to deal with his mourning and with trying to find the asshole who caused it so his damned wife wouldn't worry. Jess was already gone so he didn't have to worry about telling her he'd be back, so he just grabbed his coat and keys then set out. Dean's house was only ten minutes from his, and he guessed it was alright that he'd have to go there now. He needed to clear out the house sooner or later, and if he did it now, it was less likely it would become some impenetrable fortress in his mind. When he pulled up, Cas's car sat in the driveway, though it had less snow on it than the others on the road. He must have left in the last day or so, so he had turned his phone off on purpose. He was preparing an angry tirade in his mind after he saw the cracked window of his brother's office. As soon as he walked in the door, though, his gut turned to lead. There was no warmth to the place. Cas must have turned off the heat sometime since he got back for it to have gotten this cold. He could see his breath fogging the air in front of his face, temporarily blocking his view of everything. After he looked past his breath, things got worse. The house was a disaster. Had someone broken in? But the door was still locked. This level of destruction made no sense without a break in. Sam couldn't wrap his mind around it. A solitary pad of paper was on the dining room table, and his bad feeling got even worse. When he read it, his heart started racing and an acidic sting clawed its way up his throat. "Cas?" He yelled and got no response. Somehow sure his bad day had gone to the lowest levels of shit he'd ever seen, Sam walked toward the bedroom. He had no idea why, he just knew that that was where he was supposed to go. When he opened the door, his mind stopped and refused to think. Even years from now, he knew he'd never be able to voice the things that he saw. He would never be able to describe the way Cas looked on Dean's bed or the broken state of his body or the smell of blood and bleach. The only thing he could think of were the words he'd spat out. He had told Cas it was his fault that he was burying his brother. It was Cas's fault that he was alone and everything had gone so wrong. He would have to live with that guilt, but he made peace with the knowledge as he called 911, only wondering what he was supposed to say to anyone in Cas's family. How could he tell them that he had killed himself? Should he say it was an accident? The thoughts didn't stop cycling until Jess met him on the porch right before the paramedics wheeled Cas's body out, covered in a sheet and burned into the back of Sam's mind for the rest of his life.


End file.
